[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[Ham Priday]

Hi there, Platt and Bo --



[Platt]:
> I don't think SOM can be all of intellect.

 [Bo]:
> Well if so we are back at start with a 4th. level that contains ideas,
> theories, metaphysics .. etc. in a SOM-mind sense.

This brief exchange captures the dilemma you folks have created for 
yourselves by making Intellect an extracorporeal level, pattern, or 
whatever.  I know that Ham's two cents aren't worth a wooden nickel in this 
forum, but please hear me out.

Intelligence is the collective knowledge of mankind that has been printed 
and codified for universal understanding.  But since all knowledge is 
derived from experience, it originates with the individual intellect and is 
communicated to other individuals for their intellectual comprehension. 
While intellectual knowledge may be recorded in books or digital form, such 
symbolic representations ARE NOT INTELLECT.  Intellect or "intellection" 
(the mental process of formulating experiential intelligence) is the 
exclusive capability of the human individual.  It does not exist apart from 
subjective cognizance--as a "level", "realm", "pattern", or anything else. 
Absent human cognizance and THERE IS NO INTELLECT.

Only the rational creature has the arrogance to place Intellect on a high 
pedestal and deify it as Cosmic Truth, if not Reality itself.  By construing 
human reason as the ultimate measure of understanding, man worships a false 
god.  There is no metaphysical justification for believing that Reality 
conforms to man's finite perspective of his experienced world.  Indeed, as 
philosophers throughout the ages -- including Robert Pirsig -- have made 
abundantly clear, the reverse is true: Man creates his world to conform to 
his rational perspective.  And the essence of experience--what starts the 
whole ball of wax that we call the universe rolling--is proprietary 
value-sensibility.  I'll say it again, though it falls on deaf ears: Value 
is man's finite perspective of an absolute source from which he is 
estranged.  Only a cognizant agent that is "out of the loop" has the 
autonomy to make Value aware as a relational system.

Bo makes the point, but unfortunately has tied it up in knots with this 
accursed Level system:

[BO]:
> Can't you see the logical fault of a sub-set of a system containing the 
> whole system?
> Pirsig pointed out the container metaphor, but then went on to violate it
> by placing the MOQ as an intellectual pattern.

Exactly!  So why do you all insist on dehumanizing Intellect as a cosmic 
level?

[Platt]:
> Yes, I see the logical fault. I agree the MOQ is NOT an intellectual 
> pattern
> per se but concerned primarily with non-intellectual values that precede 
> concepts.
> Intellect has the same logical problem in attempting to explain 
> consciousness: it
> can't get outside of it to fully observe it. An eye cannot see itself.

Precisely!  So why can't you see that the intellectual object of your 
consciousness is no more real than you are?  What you observe as Reality is 
not you or Essence but the "pattern" that you construct from Value.  Or, as 
Bo has astutely expressed it, "the VALUE of the S/O distinction".

Still striving mightily to be essentially yours,
Ham